The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] (11 page)
Read The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] Online
Authors: J Michael Orenduff
“Looks like you forgot your iron, too,” she said flatly.
She struck me as a take-charge person who would not hesitate to call security if she spotted someone suspicious in the building, and I figured I fell in that category. “Sorry,” I said, “ever since my wife left me, I’ve been sort of disheveled. I have no idea how to iron. In fact, I think she took the iron.” I’m not good at improv.
“Why did she leave you?” she asked, unabashed.
“She met a younger man.”
She seemed to relax slightly.
The elevator reached the eleventh floor and I stepped out. She stuck her foot against the door.
“Did she take your razor, too?”
The woman had no shame. Then she smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Hubert.”
She laughed. “I’m Stella, but of course you already know that, don’t you? If you need to borrow an iron, just ask. I might even show you how to use it.”
Then she let the door slide shut.
As the door closed, I gave her a little wave like an idiot.
Why she thought I knew her name I couldn’t say. At least our last exchange convinced me she wasn’t going to alert the authorities to my presence in the building, so I went about doing what I had come there to do.
I walked up to the door of Loft 1101 and grasped the knob. I pushed it and pulled it. Then I tried to turn it. It was locked, but of course I wouldn’t have opened it even had it not been. I studied the door and lock and saw everything I needed to see.
I walked the length of a hall carpeted with a low industrial loop in inoffensive beige with random squiggles of blue and green. Acoustical tiles formed the grid of the ceiling. Beige walls and light green wall sconces in the shape of seashells completed the decor. If the aim was a loft look, the target had been missed.
There were eight doors with numbers on them (1101 to 1108), two elevators, and the door to the stairs. A stainless steel door eighteen inches wide and thirty inches tall was at eye level and hinged at the top. Pushing it inward revealed a shaft. I stuck my head in the shaft and saw it extended back two feet from the wall. I looked down and saw a slanted ledge three or four feet below the door. The ledge was a foot deep and covered the half of the shaft nearest the wall. Behind the ledge, the shaft continued down. I leaned in further and could see another ledge about ten feet further down.
A trash chute. I conjectured the office workers who once toiled in the building dumped their paper waste in to the chute. It would fall to the basement where a custodian would shred it, burn it, bale it, or whatever they did with waste paper in those days. The slanted ledges at each floor forced the dropped paper to the back of the chute so people reaching in from the floors below wouldn’t be hit by the paper falling from the floors above. From the aroma, I could tell the wastepaper chute was now a garbage chute.
I pulled my head out and took a breath of fresh air. Then I stuck it back in and looked up, thinking maybe Gerstner had cleverly lodged the pots at the top of the chute. All I saw was the top of the chute.
I walked to the stairwell door and studied the lock. Then I stepped out to the stairwell, gave my Achilles tendons a workout on the stairs, went through the glassed-in area, and approached the exit.
A car edged up to the exit and the gate slid open. Just after the car cleared the gate, I sprinted through. The exit ramp has a restricted view of the street, so drivers have to ease out slowly once they get past the gate. As I suspected, the driver saw me run through the gate behind her. I could have kept going. She wasn’t going to apprehend me. But she might report the incident to the building’s staff, and I didn’t need them on high alert when I returned.
So I ran up to the driver’s window and tapped on it. A pair of eyes with bright purple shadow gave me a suspicious look, which came as no surprise considering I looked like a street person. But when I made a cranking motion with my hand, she rolled down her window an inch or so.
I had my wallet in my hand. “I saw this on the ground near your car. Is it yours?”
She shook her head.
“O.K., I didn’t want you to drive off without it if it was yours.”
“Thank you,” she said and rolled up the window.
The sun was up, the sky was clear, and the air was calm, so it was a pleasant walk home. I went straight to my hammock and slept until the middle of the afternoon. When I awoke, I started to prepare a very late breakfast.
20
Which I never ate. In fact, I never even cooked it because before I could get started, I heard a persistent knocking at the door to the shop and went forward to find Miss Gladys Claiborne with her dreaded chafing dish.
Sausage, onion rings, canned soup, cereal, and crackers are things most of us eat. They are ready to go and require minimum preparation. Brown the sausage, fry the onion rings, heat the soup, spread something on the cracker, pour milk over the cereal. But for the Casserole Queen, these are not foods. They are ingredients. The dish she brought contained them all. Crumbled cooked sausage was combined with corn flakes, crushed Ritz crackers, cream of corn soup, and of course the ubiquitous shredded cheddar. The onion rings were spread on the top to form a crust and the entire thing baked to submission.
The strangest thing about these concoctions is they actually taste good. Of course sausage would probably make boiled barley taste great. I found myself asking for seconds and wondering if the same dish would be even better with
chorizo
substituted for the regular sausage. That’s when I knew I was losing my grip. Sleeping in a parking garage will do that.
Miss G reminded me that the second Thursday of the month was coming up, and I would be welcome at the covered dish night at St. Alban’s. I had gone with her once just to be nice, and now I felt bad every time I turned down chances to go again, but most of the ladies who attend are either widowed or divorced, and I felt like the prize at a raffle.
My Aunt Beatrice once dragged me to a covered dish fund-raiser at the Methodist church she attended. I believe they must have used the same recipes. Maybe they’re the staples of
cuisine américaine
,
and I’m ignorant because I grew up eating Consuela’s Mexican cooking. I did notice at St. Alban’s that Episcopalians have fancier chafing dishes and eschew the use of paper plates and plastic forks altogether.
I also remembered that St. Alban is the patron saint of sufferers. I don’t know if indigestion is a serious enough malady to rank as a suffering, but I said a small prayer to him anyway after Miss G departed. Then I took another nap to let the food settle in preparation for the cocktail hour.
21
“‘A night of unbridled passion?’ You were actually going to say that to the doorman?”
“It was just a phrase that came to mind, Suze. I probably would’ve told him it was none of his business.”
“So why didn’t you just walk out? Or, better still, why didn’t you drive there? Then you could have driven out. And if you’d found the pots, you could have put them in the back of the Bronco. How were you going to carry them on foot anyway? Steal a pillowcase from Gerstner and sling it over your shoulder with the swagger inside?”
“I think you mean ‘swag’.”
“Swag, loot, whatever you burglars call it.”
“I’m not a burglar, Susannah.”
“Not much of one anyway.”
“Look, I made no provision for carrying away the pots because I knew I wasn’t going in to Gerstner’s apartment.”
“Loft,” she corrected.
“Right. When I’m ready to actually go in, I’ll want to make sure he isn’t in there. I wanted to study his door so I could figure out how to get in when the time comes.”
“And did you figure it out?”
“I think so, thanks to you.” I told her what I had in mind and why she deserved credit for it. She suggested a different plan.
“From the way you describe it, the door doesn’t sound that strong. Why don’t you just take a crowbar and pry it open?”
“I don’t want to damage it.”
“Geez, Hubie, you’d be breaking in to the man’s house. Why the compunction about merely damaging his door?”
“I don’t want him to know he’s been broken in to.”
“Won’t he figure that out when he sees the pots are gone?”
“The pots may not be there. Maybe they’re in one of those rental storage places or at his cabin in the mountains.”
“He has a cabin in the mountains?”
“I have no idea. But if they’re not in his apartment, I don’t want him to know there was a break-in.”
“Because it would put him on alert, and he might move the pots out of the cabin you don’t know whether he has?”
“Right. But the first order of business is to find out whether the pots are in his apartment.”
She took a sip of her drink and looked at me over the rim of the glass. “That should be easy now that you’ve got a girlfriend in the building.”
“She’s hardly a girlfriend.”
“Oh, Hubie,” Susannah said in a falsetto, “come by my place and I’ll teach you how to iron.”
“She was just being a good neighbor.”
“Come on, Hubie. That’s as obvious a come-on line as I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s ridiculous, Suze. She’s better looking than me, taller than me, and younger than me. Why would she come on to an unshaven guy in wrinkled clothes who smelled faintly of gasoline fumes?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Hubie. Oops, bad choice of phrase. What I meant to say is you’re a handsome guy, and the unkempt look is in these days. You should call her up. Maybe you
are
in for a night of unbridled passion in Rio Grande Lofts.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, I can’t call her. I don’t have her number, and I can’t look it up because I don’t know her last name.”
“Just call the building and ask for Stella.”
“Hmm. What if they ask who’s calling?”
“Tell them it’s Hubert.”
“What if they want a last name? That doorman Rawlings is very thorough.”
“Make one up. She doesn’t know your last name, does she?”
I felt myself perking up. “You know, Suze, you might be right. A call could get me back in the apartment the easy way, and even if she refuses to take the call, what have I lost?”
22
Saturday morning broke clear and crisp. At least I suppose it did. I was blissfully asleep at the time, but the day was clear and crisp when I awoke several hours after it actually broke.
A sunny October day is perfect for eating Consuela Sanchez’ cooking. Of course the same could be said of a rainy day in May, a snowy day in February, or a windy day in March.
I drove up the north valley to my favorite butcher where I made a large purchase and then reversed direction and drove down the south valley until I reached the unnamed dirt road to the residence of Emilio and Consuela Sanchez.
“
Bienvenido, Señor Uberto.
”
“
Buenas dias, Señor Sanchez.
”
“Consuela, she is in the garden. She is anxious to see you.”
“I am anxious to see her as well, but first you can help me carry this box inside. It requires a strong man like you, Emilio.”
“I am no longer strong,
amigo
. I fear the years have stolen my strength.”
“Take one end of the box and we’ll see.”
He hoisted his end and we carried it inside.
“You see, you are still strong, and you will need your strength to care for
Señora
Sanchez.”
“I pray to the Virgin and to San Vicente to keep me strong. What is in
the box?”
“It is meat. You know my friend Susannah. Her family has a large ranch to the east. When they have a
matanza
, they bring her meat. It is more than she can eat, so she gives some to me. It is also more than I can eat, so I bring it to you.”
“But the box is so large. Have you kept none for yourself,
amigo
?”
“I have all I want, Emilio. You know my small
domicilio
. I have no freezer. Where would I store this meat? It would be a sin to let it spoil, so I bring it to you because I know you have room for it. And also, you know how to cook
carne asada
, and perhaps I will have the chance to taste it again.”
“Of that you can be sure. But come to the back and see Consuela.”
She slumbered under the sun in a metal lawn chair with a blanket on her lap. Her gray hair was combed back and covered with a scarf tied under her chin. Her once plump face was drawn and ashen. She smelled faintly of antiseptic and chiles and awoke when I hugged her.
“You’ve been roasting chiles,
Señora
Sanchez.”
“What do I tell you, Emilio? Uberto is my best student of cooking. He has the nose for every flavor. But, Uberto, you must call me Consuela.”
We chatted about the pecan trees they planted when they bought the lot before the house was built, about my parents, about how she had met Emilio and been relieved to see he was so handsome (it was a semi-arranged marriage), and about her daughter who lives in California and has not given them grandchildren even though she is nearing thirty and married. Consuela blamed it on California and expressed certainty that if Ninfa and her husband would move back to New Mexico, the children would surely come.